Five Nightmares That Darres Never Lived
by a thousand winds
Summary: Darres dreams of days that never happened. [IshDar]


**Title:** Five Nightmares That Darres Never Lived  
**Author/Artist:** Anchansan  
**Pairing:** Darres/Ishtar  
**Fandom:** Vampire Game  
**Theme: **#6, "the space between dream and reality"  
**Disclaimer:** All characters and situations property of Judal.

Darres dreams of days that never happened.

1. _eating out_

"But don't you think I look nice? Darres!" Ishtar twirled in her new dress. He almost smiled and quickly covered it with a heavy sigh. "Darres, come on…"

"Lady Ishtar, why don't you get someone else to do this?" he asked. "Someone who actually –" cares "knows something about clothes."

Ishtar pouted, clearly hearing the unspoken exasperation in his tone. "Darres, they'll just tell me I look wonderful. You'd rather bite your tongue off."

"What?" He really didn't like it when she did that.

"Anyway, don't you think so?" Ishtar spun again on the tips of her toes. The dress swirled around her knees and with her head tilted back to show off the bodice, she didn't look anything like the child he'd known for almost ten years.

"It's a dress, Lady Ishtar. I don't know!" He was getting steadily more annoyed with her, but Ishtar seemed to take that as some sort of code.

"You like it!"

Had he said that? "When did I say that?" he demanded. Ishtar just grinned at him. There was a knock at the door and a servant slipped inside.

"Luncheon is served, Your Highness," she said softly, inclining her head.

"Ugh." Ishtar slumped. "Do we have any visitors?" she asked hopefully. At the shake of the woman's head, she brightened considerably. "Bring it up here, then."

"Yes, Your Highness." The woman backed out of the room and Ishtar turned back to Darres. He frowned at her.

"Lady Ishtar, you should –"

"But Darres, the dining room's so _boring_." Lonely, she meant. Darres sighed and acquiesced. The dining room was vast, with a enormous table designed to seat over fifty people and not one fourteen year old girl, no matter how highly ranked.

The servant re-entered just then, carrying a covered tray. She was smiling faintly. "I've brought your luncheon, my lady."

"Thanks!" Ishtar took the tray and plopped down into a chair. The servant left, still with that dreamy half-smile. Ishtar pulled at the cloth covering to reveal a salad and steak. Picking up the cutlery, she began to eat. Darres watched her jaw working as she chewed and wondered if he'd ever be able to endure her growing up. He'd seen it just then, the whole not-child Ishtar and then she'd dropped back to being the brat he'd known and not-liked-but-loved-maybe-a-bit for years. He wasn't sure he wanted her to transform like that again.

"All right," said Ishtar, breaking his reverie. "I was thinking –" her face changed, spasming.

"Lady Ishtar?" He leant forward, grabbing her chin and making her face him.

"Darres –" another spasm and she cried out in pain. "I – don't think I'm feeling very well," she mumbled all in a rush, clenching her teeth against another wave of agony.

"It's going to be all right – look, I'll get the doctors." He ran outside, calling to the others in the hallway. He heard a crash from inside the room; Ishtar had half-fallen out of her chair and the tray had clattered to the floor in a mess of broken porcelain and spoilt food. She'd curled up in the foetal position and was letting out soft whimpers of pain. He knelt beside her, hugging her close. "It'll be all right."

"I – Darres?" Tears were spilling over her cheeks, one or two dripped onto his shoulder. "I think – poison –"

"No, I wouldn't have guessed that." Ishtar tried not to laugh, the movement seemed to make the pain worse.

"Huh – who?" She was trembling all over. He rubbed her shoulder, trying to calm her down.

"Too many to count," he assured her. "Was it you who painted my armour pink? Because if it was, I might have."

"You mean – it doesn't matter?" She forced her fist into her mouth and bit down on it, her body twisting violently. Darres held her tighter. It was like trying to calm a horse that was angry and terrified. All you could do was hang on and try to soothe it.

"No. I'll kill them just as dead if it's prince or pauper."

"Promise?" She looked up at him, green eyes dark with fear.

"You can watch."

Ishtar was really crying now. "I won't."

"You _will_. I promise."

She quietened down a bit. The pain seemed to be leaving. He wiped the cooling sweat off her forehead.

"You know I love you, don't you, Darres?" She was breathing deeply, but her hands were freezing. Where the hell were those doctors?

"Yeah, I know." He chafed her hands, trying to get the warmth back into them. It was true, as well, which helped. He felt her relax completely in his arms and hugged her tighter. Stupid idiot brat –

There was someone shaking his shoulder.

"Darres," and the voice was vaguely familiar. "Darres." He turned to stare blankly at Sir Keld. The old man looked as if he'd been crying. Darres hadn't. Darres couldn't. "Darres, I need you to tell me what happened."

Darres nodded slowly, and told him.

2. _ordinary girl_

"Haven't you heard _anything_ yet?" Sir Keld stared at him, his forehead creased with worry.

Darres sank down onto a chair and dropped his head into his hands. "Why the hell does she do this?" he demanded rhetorically. He tried not to let the weariness set in to his body, but it was a losing battle.

"Is there any news?" Darres hadn't even noticed Yujinn coming in, but he was suddenly there, already kneeling by Darres and looking at him with concern. Darres wanted to burst out with angry, irrational recriminations; it had been Yujinn's lesson Ishtar had missed first, after all, and hadn't reported her absence for an hour, but it wasn't fair. Darres should have realised himself. He was the only person to blame.

"No." Raising his head took more effort than Darres had anticipated. "You? Can't you scry for her or something?"

"I've tried." Examining the mage more closely, Darres saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and his hair and robes weren't quite as immaculate as they had been the day before. "But unless you have a direct connection, it's an inexact science at best. All I know is that she's in the city somewhere, but that was yesterday. Now there's nothing."

Darres tried to calm his shaking hands. It was going to be fine. He just had to get a drink of something hot and then he could get straight back to business and drag the Princess back by the scruff of her neck.

The sound of hoofbeats filled his ears, almost drowning the sudden pounding of his heart. There was a short pause and then the hall doors crashed open and Jill came barrelling through them. "Captain!"

He stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing the other two men and shuffled his feet nervously, gazing at the ground. Then he took off his helmet and held it tightly under his arm.

"My lord Keld, I…"

"How?" Darres asked, in a voice he wasn't quite sure he recognised. Sir Keld echoed it. Yujinn remained silent, watching.

"I – we – we found her in one of the merchant's warehouses – a meat dealer, I mean we wouldn't even have been there if it weren't for Krai trying to get a cheaper lunch, the idiot – "

"Jill," Darres interrupted. One hand was clenching the wooden arm of the chair so hard that the knuckles were ivory-white. "How?"

"Sir, we think strangled, sir, only she – she'd been hurt bad, sir, beaten and stuff and we think –" he stopped again, swallowing.

"I see," said Darres.

Sir Keld was sagging into a chair, looking twice as old as he had the day before. "Jened –"

"It's not his style," Yujinn said softly.

"No. This is just ordinary." Darres laughed. He felt more like crying. "It's what she always wanted to be."

3. _kung-fu fighter_

"She's in the tournament?" Darres demanded, glaring at Krai. The man wilted comically. "_How_?" He began to dress as quickly as possible.

"I don't know – I only saw her from a distance and when I asked, the organisers said she was the Vampire King Duzell." Krai looked anxiously at him. "Captain, are you all right?"

"_No_," Darres growled. He resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall. Only Ishtar could be so monumentally stupid and hope to get away with it.

"She's been winning her fights so far," Krai said helpfully.

"Who's she been _fighting_?" Darres snapped, grabbing his sword belt and fastening it round his waist before storming outside. Krai scurried after him.

"I left Jill there to make sure she didn't go anywhere," he informed Darres when he caught up, panting.

"If Her Highness has even stirred one _step_ –" Darres started and stopped, breaking into a run. Krai followed, much more slowly.

The sound of the clash of swords grew louder as they neared the ring. The crowd was large and thick and Darres had to fight his way through, shoving and thrusting people out of his way. One particularly fat man refused to move until Darres delivered a painful blow to his elbow with his sword hilt. He'd apologise later.

"Ishtar!" he yelled desperately as he – _finally_ – got to the front of the multitude. She was facing a tall bruiser of a fighter – Darres pegged him as an ex-mercenary – and she looked so small beside him it was ridiculous. "_Ishtar_!"

She turned, smiling, and opened her mouth to shout back as her opponent took his opportunity and brought his sword down on her neck.

4. _monsters under the bed_

He had ridden so hard that his horse practically collapsed beneath him as he reached the bottom of the steps. He threw himself off its back and dashed up the steps, shouldering the doors to that bastard's castle open and running, against all common sense, towards the screaming. He'd learnt early on in his service that wherever Ishtar went, trouble was sure to follow.

He was still too late.

As he burst in through the cellar doorway, Ishtar was flung against the wall by the violent force of a tuath's tail. Her head connected with the ancient stone with a soft, wet thud, distinctly audible to Darres over the din of the battle. It reminded him of when Ishtar was little and she'd had one of her more passionate tantrums. She'd thrown an expensive porcelain doll against her playroom wall with much the same results.

Except, he realised dimly as he picked Ishtar up, even the best glue in the world wasn't going to put Ishtar's skull back together. He stared at the blood. There wasn't really that much. When the doll had been returned to her, she'd made it her favourite, stroking the almost invisible cracks in its face and calling them battle scars. Darres cradled her carefully and touched his fingers to the wound. It wouldn't scar.

The blood was still warm.

With more tenderness than Ishtar had ever shown to any of her toys, even Darres himself, he laid her down in a so far undisturbed corner.

Then he joined the fray.

5. _the cup of poison_

Darres was attempting to watch the perimeter, but his gaze kept flickering back to Princess Ishtar, resplendent in a new dress that looked just the same as the old one. She seemed troubled, constantly turning and whispering into her doctor's ear.

_Some doctor_, he thought, not entirely sarcastically. Lady Sonia seemed to think he was the bee's knees.

(She thought Yuujel was the bee's knees, too. Darres hated being fair and just when it came to certain people.)

But where had he come from? Knowing Ishtar, he'd tried to assassinate her and she'd talked him out of it. She was doing that a lot these days.

Lady Leene was handing Ishtar a glass of wine. Darres frowned and looked for Ashley in the crowd. Yuujel had assured him that Ashley's word was good, but considering Ashley's track record when it came to Leene, Darres was uneasy.

Ishtar was laughing and holding the glass up to the light, apparently admiring the effect. Lady Leene seemed amused, too (but no sensible poisoner would put a solid into a drink, even one that dissolved quickly), and where the hell was Ashley? Lucy was crossing the room quickly, bent on spilling the wine. She didn't know about the swap.

Ishtar brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply. Lucy caught her arm as it relaxed and came down. Her face was taut with fear. "Lady Ishtar – " she began, but Lady Leene cut her off.

"Honestly, Lucy," and she had a very disagreeable voice, "what on earth's wrong? Really, you look like death."

"Don't worry about it," said Ishtar to everyone and no one. "Don't worry – " Her knees buckled beneath her and she pitched forward onto Lady Leene, dragging at the shoulders of her dress as she slid to the ground.

"She's fainted!" cried someone and Ishtar's doctor knelt beside her.

"No, she hasn't," he said coolly. Darres stayed where he was, frozen with disbelief and staring round the room, searching for a head of brown hair.

Where in Phelios's name was Ashley?

-

Darres dreams of days that never happened.


End file.
